On Sunday 24 November, after thorny negotiations that gave rise to deep anger on the part of developing countries (see EUROPE 13530/4), the final agreement reached at COP29 in Baku (Azerbaijan) set out an amount of $300 billion in annual funding between now and 2035, which rich countries will have to provide to these countries vulnerable to climate change.
While the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomed the COP29 agreement, hailing on X “a new era for climate cooperation and finance”, the reactions of European ministers and representatives were mixed.
The French Minister for Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said that the agreement was not “equal to the challenges”. She particularly regretted that the text on financing climate action had been adopted “in a climate of unprecedented confusion, and contested by several countries”.
Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, pointed out that “$300 billion is just the beginning”, and stressed that funding for climate action and progress on mitigation must not be separated, despite the fact that no agreement has been reached on this point.
In the same vein, Belgium’s Energy Minister, Tinne Van der Straeten, highlighted on the morning show of Belgian station Radio1 that negotiations had failed to include a reference to the phasing out of fossil fuels in the final agreement, even though this had been agreed at COP28 in Dubai (see EUROPE 13313/16).
The European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, expressed his delight on X that the base of contributors to climate action funding had been “increased”. The agreement does encourage developing countries, defined as such by the United Nations, to contribute to the financing target, but only on a voluntary basis.
In general, reactions were positive about the agreement reached on the framework for international carbon markets (Article 6 of the Paris Agreement), which “paves the way for meaningful carbon pricing policies on a global scale”, as Mohammed Chahim (S&D, Dutch), Vice-Chair of the European Parliament delegation to COP29, pointed out.
However, he called on the EU to remain “a world leader in advocating solid and significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”.
To see the texts forming the final agreement of COP29: https://aeur.eu/f/egu (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)